Twenty-five years after the Tiananmen protests, one man is still paying for
the stand he took on the streets of Beijing

A tall, introverted 50-year-old man from Beijing is the only known person still serving time in prison of the roughly 15,000 who were arrested after the Tiananmen protests.

Miao Deshun was a factory worker who became wrapped up in the chaos of the Tiananmen protests. Together with four friends, he was arrested for arson as he battled the army on the streets of Beijing.

"According to our records, at present he is the one prisoner still in prison," said John Kamm, the director of the Dui Hua Foundation, which has successfully lobbied for the release of several prisoners from the Tiananmen protests.

Workers like Mr Miao, who took to the streets to fight, were hit with far harsher sentences than the students peacefully occupying Tiananmen Square, Mr Kamm said. Dui Hua estimates that "fewer than 100 people" were even executed.

"There's a big difference between violent and non-violent counter revolution," he said.

Related Articles

"The higher educated, university graduates did not, for the most part, get as heavy sentences as the workers and the peasants. Those guys were all in the front line throwing molotov cocktails and the intellectuals did not do that," he said. "If you look at all the recent releases that we have reported, they have all been workers".

He added that Dui Hua had a list of a handful of other prisoners who were unaccounted for. "Based on what happened to many others, dozens who were given life in prison or a suspended death sentence, they would be out. But we do not know," he said.

A cellmate who spent time with Mr Miao in Beijing's No.1 prison, where he was initially confined, said that his sentence had been extended because he refused to cooperate with the prison authorities. The man asked not to be named in fear that he might be targeted for speaking out.

"Miao was very opinionated about the Communist party and he refused to do the work we were set in prison," he said. At the time the prisoners manned a badminton racquet production line inside the block.

Each day, the prisoners would rise at 6am and work until 10pm, breaking to eat watery cabbage soup that was ladled from an old oil barrel that had its top sliced off.

"Everyone had their sentence cut for good behaviour, one way or another, but Miao never got anything. Actually his sentence was extended not long after he was thrown in because he refused to do the labour."

"It got him beaten up over and over. He was always thrown into solitary confinement, once for two months, because he had rebelled against the guards," he added.

Almost 6ft-tall and rake-thin, Mr Miao seldom spoke, but stood out among the prisoners. "He was so skinny and he developed hepatitis and often went to the clinic," he said. "He never slept at night and sat on his bed all day while everyone else worked. He refused to consider himself a prisoner and he would spend days reading the newspapers, analysing every article."

He added that five years after his imprisonment, his family had stopped visiting. "His father used to come frequently, always crying, and he would buy things for him," he said.

"But I think he did not want his family to have to look after him, he wanted to be responsible for himself. But after his father stopped visiting, he had no money. He only had six yuan (60p) per month and would spend two yuan on soap, two yuan on toilet paper and two yuan on washing powder. The others gave him food sometimes."

Another prisoner, who also developed hepatitis at the same time, said the authorities had stopped Mr Miao's family from visiting him because Mr Miao would not confess to his crimes.

A third prisoner, who also knew Mr Miao, described how the authorities had rounded up workers after the protests. "I was a worker in a printing factory," he said.

"I went on the streets and I set fire to an oily rag and put it on the wheel of a truck. Someone must have reported me. On June 10, there were two plainclothes at the office. They put me in a jeep and lifted my t-shirt over my head and forced me to kneel on the floor of the jeep, with one person stepping on my face and another sitting on my back. When we got to the police station, they started beating me hard, and then slamming my head into the door over and over," he said.

"They told me they would send me to Tiantan park where the martial law forces were camped and they would dig a hole and bury me there."

After his trial, he spent 17 years in prison, being released in September 2006. "What we did was just to show our anger and dissatisfaction with the government and we were not some mob.

"Some people once asked me whether I regretted what I did. I said I don't regret it and will not regret it, even though it has cost me a lot. My father died in 2003 and after I was put in prison my wife and my three year old son left me.

"I see him sometimes during the Chinese New Year holiday. Once when he was in school, the teacher threatened that if he was naughty he would be put in prison like me. He is quite introverted, and I think what happened to me had an influence on him."

Mr Miao is now in Yanqing prison, a special facility for prisoners with medical conditions. He is scheduled for release in 2018, but may have nowhere to go. It was not possible to contact his family. "He suffers from severe mental illness," said Mr Kamm.

"If we look at the guy who was released at the end of 2012 in a very similar situation, essentially he had nowhere to go. The family was indigent, the sister couldn't take him in, she had to sell her home and a neighbourhood committee stepped in and made arrangements for him. That is a possibility. It may be he has no one to go to and he is ill," he said.